Chalk Outlines PT. 1

May 02, 2018:

The Sorcerer Supreme and the Witchblade.. Meet over Chalk Outlines

Pawn Shop - Gotham

((In RP))

Characters

NPCs: None.

Mentions:

Plot:

Mood Music: None.


Fade In…

Lately it seems Sara is getting a number of weird cases. Possibly her superiors know more than they say. Or maybe synchronicity is at work, the Witchblade drawing the strange and the supernatural to her.

It is indeed the synchronicity wave, the curse that affects so many of those touched by magic and Fate. Tonight it pulled the detective to a small pawn shop in a side alley. Cops visit this place every so often since petty criminals keep pawning stolen goods here. This time it was not a petty criminal. This time it was murder.

About an hour after closing the old man that owned the shop was stabbed trice. Heart, neck and eye. Pending autopsies it looks any of the wounds would have been deadly. The robber didn’t take any money, although it looks he was looking for something. Some boxes and selves with assorted pawned junk were thrown around. But finding out what was taken is going to be difficult. The old man’s wife found the corpse and she is giving a nervous statement in a broken English, Romanian accent.

This is Gotham. And this is not the best neighborhood. So reporters are unlikely to get involved. Even the locals do show little curiosity and surprise at the crime. It is almost midnight, anyway. So why is a well-dressed, middle-aged man peering through the door, ignoring the police tape?


The 'Middle Aged' detective was called in due to the "placement" of a murder that seems almost sacrificial.

Sara is rested upon one knee just outside ofthe bodie's outline… A deep breathe pulled inward as the tiny note-book is snapped closed and tucked in her coat-pocket. A layer she now casts aside to clattter leather, zippers,..etc against a wall.

The hand bearing the Witchblade runs through auburn hair and when it descends through ends the clawed tips descend, coated in that sybiotic relation.

The gaze set upon the chalk-outline lingers even as a silhuette outlines along the windows of the door, the fetters of tape she rolled out fall to the blood-letted streets.

The Witchblade lingers..

Sara peels lips from her teeth in a P.D. Defensive manner when she rises to grip the door and whip it open!


The middle-aged gentleman at the other side of the door steps back, blinking slow. "Hmm, good evening," he offers, looking somewhat confused. He wears a deep burgundy coat over a blue suit that must be rather expensive. It is raining outside, contrarily to the weather prediction, then again it looks like it is always raining in nights like this.

The man's coat is not wet, though. And no, he is not carrying an umbrella either.

"You can see me, so I assume you are a…" his eyes go to Sara's wrist, he closes his mouth. "Or maybe not. Let me start again, please. Doctor Stephen Strange, former surgeon, nowadays an occultist."


"Detective Sara Pezzini." Stated from feminine vocals as the door is held open by er booted toe, to welcome the man inside…

Though her frame stands in the way of a full-on approach while those eyes drop and rise in assessment.
Not wet.
No umbrella.
Cloak(d)…

Lips go thin upon the 'Official Greeting' between them, but her sweeping stance to allow him entry is enough to bridgea certain gap. "Assume I am," A pause with a tilt of head, casting aubur over her shoulder.

"What am I, Doctor Stephen Strange?" Her own gaze flickds to her hand/arm/pendage coated in the Witchblade.

No move to hide the exposure, but once he steps within the structure of the crime-scene, the door slams behind them! with a CLATTER~!

Hard-edged, hard-eyed, Sara watches the man and then goes back to the scene, lowering to a crouch. "What interests you here, Sorcerer Supreme?"

… she knows….


"I was going to say an Adept," replies the Strange with a faint smile. "But now I think are bonded to a powerful talisman." And she is well-informed for a police officer. That might make things easier. Or much more complicated.

"I was alerted," he explains. "By a device… not called. A warding was broken here that set off an alarm in my home in New York." He peers around. "To be honest I expected a temple, or the dwelling of another occultist, not a pawn shop."

The murder? Well, no. That does not surprise him much. "May I talk to the woman?" He asks, looking at the old crying lady with the Eastern Europe accent.


"You can stop candy-coating, /Doctor/," And even though her title given towards Strange seems as if it should be decimated and run over… Her gaze hold steady, as if she is asking for answers unseen.

A detective to the Core. Sara is /cutting/, but leaving the… quick. The case means more, the body left in a chalk-outline means more… The residual energy means… More!

"Welcome to Gotham." Sara states then as she looks away and draws her 'Blade-laden hand before her profile, curls clawed fingers inward towards it and with a 'kiss' to fingertips it all fades to a 'simple' bracelet, the glean of her gaze his way is no-more narrowed upon his question of the 'Witness'.

The same hand gestures him to her, an offering, one in need far more than she can give, but He, /Can/.. Console…

Perhaps? But the way her eyes harden once again give tell to her silent demand. "Talk… please."

"On the record…" Sara whispers as her hand smoothes down he pocket along posterior to record upon the S-Phone she carries - Recording the convo while she steps over the chalked outline of the deceased..


"Thank you," for the ‘welcome’ to Gotham. The ‘on record’ gets a long-suffering sigh. A sorcerer’s life was much simpler before cellphones. Then again, it might be time magic gets back to the limelight after a few centuries of ‘reason’. Given what is coming, the people need to know.

He comes closer to the woman and looks into her eyes, murmuring some words in a foreign tongue. The old lady calms down immediately. Strange switches to English, asking the woman about the last few days. If she saw anything strange (she didn’t). If someone had pawned some odd thing (no). Did his husband mention anything unusual (no, and he would have). Has she noticed if anything is missing (she has not checked yet). Are there records of what is pawned by whom (only for the last year or so – the rest becomes owned by the shop).

Strange nods patiently, apparently unbothered by the rather unhelpful information. It sounds all quite believable considering how the shop worked. Neither the man nor the woman were clean, of course. But she seems genuinely upset. And now she seems pre-naturally calm and sincere.


Sara is crouched within the chalk-outline, but it is apparent the flicker of her eyes - framed in the primordial claws of the 'Blade' - Strange and the Romani elder have her attention.

She did not have the tact, nor the "tongue" to reach out to her /heart//, like Strange just did, but that is why she is… The WitchBlade, not Him.

Who would want his job anyway? Tch!

The small notepad in her hand flicks closed like a deck of cards, tucked up a sleeve and ghost while she listens, as does her recording S-Phone.

Slowly, she rises as she speaks, more to Strange, than the woman. "Is there anything missing? Will she /finally/ give over the recent records they have?" But as Sara asks Strange, her eyes slowly travel from him to the elder woman, going from unsure and hardened to that of a plea when she steps gently over the shadow of the death that took place here.


The old woman turns her eyes to Sara, blinking slowly. “Rest now, please,” says Strange quietly. And the woman goes to sit down on a corner.

“Er… I put her in a light trance,” admits Strange somewhat embarrassed. “So she was calm while I did some testing. The good news is… she didn’t do it. But there was no sign of a forced door or broken window, so I think the man opened the door to the killer willingly. Or the killer came in through superhuman means. But not through magic, I don’t think.”

But Strange missed the corpse; and it limits his magic investigation a good deal. He does not know about the triple stabbing yet. No, an old woman couldn’t have done it. It was someone fairly strong and very dexterous.

“I do have an idea of what was stolen,” he admits, “it was kept in a warded cage and it was broken…” he is looking at the floor now, where a good number of boxes and bags have been thrown in a hurry. Evidence! He really shouldn’t… but he does and pucks up a small, cylindrical case of dark wood. “This one,” murmurs the sorcerer. It is broken at one side.

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